Prediction from Feb 2018

[Harry Stottle]

12 hours ago, Damien said:

Super League was an international competition in 2022, we had a team in Toulouse and a team in Perpignan as well as the English clubs.

We had Toronto in SL before Covid hit and destroyed them.

Now I know the intention of this thread is to mock but it's not like Lenegan was ridiculously wrong. The only real absurdity is New York.

2017 he said in 5 years time, so where is Toronto and New York and he was talking about possibly Perth, Western Australia being part of the package, and as we talk now come next Monday it will only be a club in Perpignan exactly the same as when he made his predictions.

Edited September 2, 2022 by Harry Stottle

[Davo5]

Might after stop doing a coupon,some saddo might find them in 5 yrs & start a thread about the non winning ones.

[Dunbar]

1 hour ago, Harry Stottle said:

Lighten up Dunbar, I am sorry about Mrs Dunbar's start up buisness but if she had been making predictions as Mr Leneghan did in a public domain perhap's she would get questions asked, his predictions failing could be all blamed on Covid but I doubt that would be a totally honest answer.

Yes, you can tell me to lighten up.

And so I can tell you something as well.

Your persona is built up on here with reference to your success in the business world.  To quote you on this forum "I have both bought and sold a business" and "I used to play with my own money in business Tommy, you may well change your attitude if your are ever fortunate or clever enough to back yourself financially.

So let me tell you. Any respect I had for you as someone who was successful in the world of business has completely disappeared as you start to mock people who failed to predict and adapt to a once in a lifetime global crisis.

It does you no credit to look back on other people's failures and gloat. It really really isn't a good look.

[Gerrumonside ref]

Is this thread really happening?

[Padge]

The thing is he wasn't far off but for the pandemic which screwed up many a prediction in many a field.

[Stuff Smith]

3 hours ago, Harry Stottle said:

2017 he said in 5 years time, so where is Toronto and New York...

Toronto is in Canada. New York is in the USA. (Google maps is ace; I'm going to look up other places now!)

Edited September 1, 2022 by Stuff Smith

[The Art of Hand and Foot]

1997, on boots n all, stevo said, and I paraphrase , Oldham will be back in superleague in 3-5 years. Yeah right!!!.  Predictions and prophesies along with prophets are bo llocks. It's a numbers game. There's at least one person saying Wakefield Will win superleague next year. If, on the off chance, it happens, they'll be regarded as a prophet, a sayer, a person of extreme knowledge. They're not. How many economists do you know who can predict the future? Exactly!!!

Edited September 1, 2022 by The Art of Hand and Foot

[Adelaide Tiger]

The only sure fire way to predict the future is to pay a to spiritualist to contact Paul the Octopus and ask what will be super League be like in five years time!

[Dave T]

Once again we see arguments flip around this subject. 

One week we hear it is the RFL and SLE who have effed these teams up,  the next it's accepted its the pandemic. 

Ignoring any subtext behind the OP,  there is an interesting point here. If Lenegan was championing that we would be an international league,  then we really should have had a strategy to deliver that. We could still have Toronto,  Toulouse could still be in SL,  questions should be asked about what New York even was but I do actually think revisiting this prediction is a valid and interesting one. 

We have learnt plenty from the last 5 years,  but even without the pandemic if is likely we would still be in the same place.  So what have the leaders learned?  What are we doing differently?  Are we still trying to be an international league? 

Hopefully these will come out in the IMG review,  but imo it is a topic that needs to be addressed and plans created. 

Edited September 2, 2022 by Dave T

[FearTheVee]

23 hours ago, gingerjon said:

New York was only ever a Chasing Roos fantasy.

Never mind New York - the fact a chairman of one of our big clubs thought Perth could be in SL tells me all I need to know about how half baked some of the nonsense that comes out of their mouths is.

The whole idea of a fully internaional league makes no sense if it is not the premier competition.  A competition with teams flying from Perth, New York etc that isn't even the top RL competition in the world is a farce.

It all just smacks of chairmen thinking - we can't make this work, we need a silver bullet. New York is a big glamorous city, that will fix it!

Edited September 2, 2022 by FearTheVee

[mrfranco]

So how wrong was he, actually?

We do have an international competition, and we did have both Toulouse and Cats in SL this year. It is also true to say that we will be back to 1 international team in SL next year - just as we had 5 years ago (although they've won trophies in between times).

When the pandemic hit, Toronto were in SL, Ottawa were coming in the next season and had signed a coach and players and NY were holding the Cup draw and looking to enter the league asap. I understand the scepticism about NY as they never got further than a shaky merch website, but I do believe they were on the verge of getting the nod - so we would have actually had 3 NA teams in the system. That has all evaporated now, but when you look at that situation in Feb 2020 as I describe it above, IL's predictions were looking pretty good (apart from the Perth one, that was like Toronto on acid).

That's not to say that the Wolfpack and others would definitely had succeeded long-term, we've all seen enough Cardiffs, Mansfields and Carlisles in our time to know that RL has a massive history of failed expansion clubs.

[Gordon Street]

On 01/09/2022 at 10:23, Harry Stottle said:

Posted on here in Feb 2018

“Super League will be an international competition in five years’ time,” Lenagan said.

“I believe at that time, as well as the English clubs, we’ll have Toulouse, we’ll have Perpignan, we’ll have Toronto, we’ll probably have New York within that time scale.

“The Super League is doing a lot of innovative things to take the game forward. The 12 clubs are working tremendously well together, that’s how we got permission to do this [Wollongong game].

“Who knows, if the NRL don’t do something about [expansion with] Perth, with a single flight back to England it wouldn’t at all surprise me if they became interested in playing in a competition of that scale.”

Quite interesting, to read the reaction of some of those who believed it would happen.

super league is international. A French/Catalan club is in the playoffs. We had Toronto small mindedness and covid did for them. We had Toulouse, in their case it was just small mindedness although one hopes they will be back.